Artists

Nolan Cope

NOLAN COPE, a 13 year old stu­dent at Crane School, attended a talk that James Kahn gave at his school about his back­ground and career as a writer for TV, films and books of well known films. Nolan took advan­tage of the oppor­tu­nity and asked James if he would be his men­tor as he wanted to write a novel. Nolan worked with a plot and chap­ter out­line with James. After a few ses­sions, Nolan would write his next chap­ter and send it to James who would cri­tique it and guide him through the next phase. Nolan man­aged to com­plete 6 chap­ters and has an out­line for the rest of the book by chap­ters. James said he wished all stu­dents he has had were as responsive.

“Every­thing I envi­sioned in a men­tor for this project is what I’m get­ting from Jay Our part­ner­ship is good and we work well together as a team.”

Nolan was men­tored by James Kahn.

Photo by Julie McLeod  

Cybil Gilbert­son

CYBIL GILBERTSON is the founder and direc­tor of NECTAR, a per­for­mance held 3–4 times a year at Yoga Soup. It hon­ors a dif­fer­ent non­profit each time and presents poets, dancers, chore­o­g­ra­phers, musi­cians, artists and pho­tog­ra­phers. She has cre­ated a won­der­ful venue for expo­sure of many local artists. She has been men­tored by Julie McLeod to develop her admin­is­tra­tive, pro­duc­tion and busi­ness skills over the past year. She is a cer­ti­fied Pilates and Yoga instruc­tor and a licensed mas­sage ther­a­pist. She grad­u­ated UCSB with a BA in Dance in 1997 and was awarded the Alice Con­do­d­ina Per­for­mance Award. She has danced with SB Dance The­ater, Robin Bisio, Esalen Int’l Arts Fes­ti­val, Mon­terey Dance Col­lec­tive, LA Music Awards, Cirque Des­tino, NIGHTS at SB Museum of Art. She received the Pro­fant Foun­da­tion for the Arts per­for­mance award in 2002 and SB Arts Col­lab­o­ra­tive grant last year in sup­port of  NECTAR and a Com­mu­nity Arts grant from the SB County Arts Com­mis­sion. She has just debuted  her newest pro­duc­tion, Trey who was born on Sep­tem­ber 1. Cybil is being men­tored by Julie McLeod in pro­duc­tion administration.

“What a true gift and inspi­ra­tion to have a men­tor­ship pro­gram to usher artists into the world with such care, so that they can give back to the com­mu­nity with under­stand­ing and exper­tise in their cho­sen medium. I have taken per­son­al­ized work­shops, acquired appro­pri­ate licenses, applied for and received a SB County Arts Grant, bought a com­puter and installed help­ful pro­grams, and much more. Julie and AWOL have helped me tran­si­tion from being a pro­fes­sional per­former to a suc­cess­ful artis­tic director.”

Photo by Elite Henensen
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Elite Henen­son

ELITE HENENSEN: Elite came to the United State from Israel know­ing she could not get train­ing or earn a liv­ing as a pho­tog­ra­pher there. She took every course she could at SB City Col­lege, learn­ing pho­tog­ra­phy, web design and com­puter skills. She tutored in Hebrew class and Pho­to­shop. She worked for a stu­dio tak­ing school por­traits and as a  pho­to­jour­nal­ist for Noozhawk. In Israel she was  a Pla­toon Lieu­tenant in charge of 64 sol­diers. Elite’s life changed with her men­tor­ship with Mac­duff Ever­ton. She gained courage, knowl­edge and her pas­sion for pho­tog­ra­phy grew.  Her work improved immensely. Mac­duff said, “I didn’t do any­thing except give her per­mis­sion to make mis­takes.” Elite did a work­shop through AWoL with SB Char­ter School 7–9 year olds guid­ing them to pho­to­graph a friend, alter it in Pho­to­shop and print it to hang at home. Elite is now get­ting her degree in pho­tog­ra­phy at the Uni­ver­sity of Ari­zona and vol­un­teer­ing to teach pho­tog­ra­phy to under­served young­sters there. She spent last sum­mer pho­tograph­ing local natives in their vil­lages in Israel and promises to come back to Santa Bar­bara. http://www.elitehenensonstudio.com

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Liam Burke

LIAM BURKE can be seen in the films Swing Kids, Cen­ter Stage and The Pro­duc­ers. He began his career in The Aus­tralian Bal­let danc­ing roles such as Blue­birds, Iago (Oth­ello), and Flower Fes­ti­val in Gen­zano, then appeared in the Aus­tralian, West End, and Broad­way pro­duc­tions of  Gypsy, A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream, The Wiz­ard Of Oz, Cats, The Who’s Tommy, Annie Get Your Gun, West Side Story, Tap Dogs (Obie Award), A Christ­mas Carol, and THE MUSIC MAN. He was Cre­ative Assis­tant at Madi­son Square Gar­den and has assisted many chore­o­g­ra­phers includ­ing Susan Stro­man on the Broad­way revival of The Music Man. Liam received crit­i­cal acclaim across the globe dur­ing his 18 year per­form­ing career and in 2003 he began work­ing towards his B.A. in Cre­ative Writ­ing from Empire State Col­lege, NYC  (Richard Porter Leach Fel­low­ship). Liam has worked exten­sively with Time­line Films and his writ­ing has been pub­lished in Dance Mag­a­zine, Dance Aus­tralia, The James White Review and on many arts web­sites. He is founder and cre­ator of the inter­na­tional dance web­site http://www.danceatlas.com.

“Julie McLeod and my men­tor­ship with Art with­out Lim­its nur­tured my cre­ativ­ity and tal­ent while push­ing me to new into unchar­tered ter­ri­tory — some­thing that artists rarely get but badly need. . I didn’t know you from a bar of soap and you took me on and gave me some­thing on no terms what­so­ever. You have reminded me what I have inside me and what I think I was actu­ally los­ing a grip of. I so appre­ci­ate it!”

Liam is being men­tored by Julie McLeod in dance crit­i­cism.
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Shan­non Jordan

SHANNON JORDAN: I have been addicted to Pho­tog­ra­phy since my Grand­mother gave me a cam­era to take on my 5^th grade field trip to Hearst Cas­tle! I was inspired to pho­to­graph the beauty of the Hawai­ian Islands after spend­ing a good por­tion of my life there.

I moved back to Cal­i­for­nia and real­ized I could make a career out of pho­tog­ra­phy with the proper edu­ca­tion instead of it just being a hobby.

I started to work for Tour­ing & Tast­ing Mag­a­zine as their Wine Club Man­ager. They soon gave me small photo projects lead­ing to a few of the cover shots. It has been a great way to get my feet wet in the industry.

After attend­ing sev­eral pho­tog­ra­phy classes at SBCC, I real­ized that there was much more to know that school would not be able to teach me. When I learned about the Art With­out Lim­its pro­gram, I knew that it was exactly what I needed in order to help turn my pas­sion for pho­tog­ra­phy into a real career. After just a short time I have learned so much already from my men­tor, Rod Rolle!  I so look for­ward to what may come next!

The great­est thing I have learned so far is that I CAN do what I set my sights on! I am so excited about my men­tor ship, I can­not thank you enough! It has changed the direc­tion of my life at the moment…scary as it was, it is the right thing for me to be doing, I am sure of it!
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Coby Kaufer

COBY KAUFER: I have gone to classes on edit­ing, I cre­ated a video about my Bar Mitz­vah, which is on my web­site and you tube chan­nel youtube.com/bluejayke) I used Pre­miere Pro and After FX to make this video. I was men­tored by Russ Spencer who helped me put it together. I have done some ani­ma­tion, tuto­ri­als, and pro­grammed games. Also I have worked with a vari­ety of equip­ment for sbTNN(Teen New Net­work), includ­ing the Cam­era Con­trol Panel, The Toaster, and the Sound­board. I have been inter­ested in my art form for as long as I can remem­ber, but I think it started to blos­som in me when I was around seven years old, and entered my first film fes­ti­val at Whiz Kidz, in Santa Bar­bara.

I have had train­ing in cam­era angles, movie edit­ing, com­po­si­tion. I have learned about script writ­ing, edit­ing, sound edit­ing, and more with Russ Spencer. Also I have learned most of the Pro­gram­ming I know from Page Shields, direc­tor of Whiz Kidz.

CLICK HERE to watch Coby’s film.

Photo by David M. Char­trand
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Jackie Rot­man

JACKIE ROTMAN, at the age of 14, founded Every­body Dan­ceNow! (EDN!) in Santa Bar­bara. It has pro­vided free hip-hop dance pro­grams to over 1,000 young peo­ple who would oth­er­wise not be able to afford them since 2005. EDN! was fea­tured on the #1 TV show for young peo­ple, America’s Best Dance Crew. Jackie and EDN! lever­aged this oppor­tu­nity to launch Every­body Dance Now! National, to equip young peo­ple through­out the coun­try to cre­ate 10 EDN! chap­ters in 10 cities in the US and Canada, with Jackie as its National Direc­tor. At 19, she is cur­rently a junior major­ing in Pub­lic Pol­icy at Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity focus­ing on inter­na­tional devel­op­ment. She spent 10 weeks in Uganda last sum­mer research­ing a non­profit that teaches a social entre­pre­neur­ship to sec­ondary school stu­dents to empower future lead­ers of Africa. She will intern this spring for the World Bank in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Jackie was nom­i­nated by Stan­ford for the pres­ti­gious Tru­man Award, and is wait­ing to hear back about the schol­ar­ship. Hav­ing learned and taught dance on 4 con­ti­nents, she believes in the power of dance to con­nect with peo­ple from across all cultures.

“Men­tor­ship has impacted my life in so any ways.  Julie responded to a “PS” line in an email when I was 14 about a non­profit that I wanted to cre­ate to offer dance pro­grams to chil­dren who could not afford it, and today, my orga­ni­za­tion, Every­body Dance Now!, has served more than 1,500 youth and is still going strong. Guid­ance on every aspect of the orga­ni­za­tion from grant writ­ing to bud­get to cre­ation, to how to deal with var­i­ous issues in human resources and deal­ing with some­times chal­leng­ing inter­ac­tions with other peo­ple — who were often­times twice or three times my age — have con­tributed so much to Every­body Dance Now!‘s success.”

Jackie has been men­tored by Julie McLeod over the past five years. www.everybodydancenow.org   _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Paul Gan­n­away

PAUL GANNAWAY, a self-described “crayon head stuck in a dig­i­tized world,” has taken art classes at SBCC where he became pro­fi­cient in rail­way pho­tog­ra­phy and portraiture. Unsure of his future direc­tion, in 2005, after years of explo­ration, he knew pre­cisely what he wanted to do.

Paul started study­ing the mas­ters, his favorites – Picasso, Braque (cubism), Escher, Dali and the con­tem­po­raries: Stan Win­ston, Tim bur­ton and oth­ers. Thus, the “NEW IMAGERY OF THE INDIGO MYTHICS” were born. Says Paul: “My cre­ations are on 40″ by 32″ col­ored mat boards. With my trusty draft­ing tools, my HB pen­cil, sketch paper…I was off to the races. As I was cre­at­ing my ‘crea­tures’, I was absorb­ing all aspects of ancient art. I was impressed with North Amer­i­can Native art and ancient Egypt­ian art. What I wanted to con­vey thru my mythic is…life is tough - the strug­gle the inten­sity of exis­tence.” Paul’s favorite sub­ject is avian preda­tors: “The dynam­ics, the power, the inten­sity, and the deter­mi­na­tion. I like to think I bring the human equa­tion into my art.”

“It was time to move for­ward after years of study­ing art. Thanks to “Arts With­out Lim­its” my jour­ney to becom­ing a pro­fes­sional artist has begun.”

Paul is being helped by Jeff Hud­gins in devel­op­ing a logo and web­site to dis­play his work. Soon Paul will be paired with a men­tor to gain fur­ther insights into mar­ket­ing his art.
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Jeff Hud­gins

JEFF HUDGINS is a grad­u­ate of the Uni­ver­sity of Col­orado with a degree in Film Stud­ies. He has worked in film, ani­ma­tion, graphic design, web sites, as well as hav­ing a back­ground in act­ing and has spent time vol­un­teer­ing for youth non­prof­its. Most recently he has worked for Bejuba! Enter­tain­ment and Foothill Enter­tain­ment, two rep­utable enter­tain­ment dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­nies located in Bur­bank and Santa Bar­bara, respec­tively. Jeff  devel­oped our new logo and is respon­si­ble for devel­op­ing our website.